People line up to hear oral arguments at the Supreme Court on Feb. 27 in the Shelby County, Ala., v. Holder voting rights case. A 5-4 majority struck down a key provision today requiring Texas and eight other states with a history of discrimination to seek federal approval for changes in election rules.

WASHINGTON — The US Supreme Court has struck down a central provision of the Voting Rights Act that has long put Texas and most of the South under federal scrutiny.

The historic 5-4 ruling, by Chief Justice John Roberts, finds that the current formula for picking which states face such hurdles is outdated and unconstitutional. Until Congress devises a new formula that passes muster, these states no longer need to seek Justice Department approval ahead of time for new voter ID rules, congressional maps and other changes.

The court emphasized that other elements of the landmark law, enacted in 1965 and amended and reauthorized several times since, remain in place. Allegations of bias can still be brought to court after the fact under Section 2, another provision. But Section 5 — the one that requires so-called “preclearance” — cannot be invoked unless and until a new formula is adopted. (Section 4, which deals with the formula, was the one struck down by the court today.)

“Our decision in no way affects the permanent, nationwide ban on racial discrimination in voting found in [Section] 2. We issue no holding on [Section] 5 itself, only on the coverage formula. Congress may draft another formula based on current conditions,” Roberts wrote.

(update: In Austin, Texas Attorney Greg Abbott announced that the state’s controversial Voter ID law — challenged by the Justice Department under Section 5 — “will take effect immediately.” And “redistricting maps passed by the Legislature may also take effect without approval from the federal government.” More here.

And Gov. Rick Perry called the ruling ” a clear victory for federalism and the states. Texas may now implement the will of the people without being subject to outdated and unnecessary oversight and the overreach of federal power.”

President Barack Obama said he is “deeply disappointed” at the ruling and called on Congress to rectify the problems cited by the court. U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder vowed to protect voting rights with tools the Supreme Court left intact.)

The ruling is here. The court split along predictable lines. Roberts was joined by fellow conservatives Justices Antonin Scalia, Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas, and the right-leaning swing justice, Anthony Kennedy.

In recent years, the Justice Department has used preclearance to block a controversial voter ID law in Texas, and maps proposed for use in congressional and legislative elections after the 2010 Census. Appeals in both cases are pending at the Supreme Court; the impact of today’s ruling on those cases was not immediately clear.

In her dissenting opinion, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg ticked off civil rights violations in Texas and other states, arguing that without a deterrent, minority voters would face even more routine mistreatment.

In 2006, for instance, the Supreme Court itself found “the mark of intentional discrimination” in Texas’ congressional maps. The state responded by trying to curtail early voting in a Latino-heavy district – an effort thwarted by a preclearance enforcement action.

“The number of discriminatory changes blocked or deterred by the preclearance requirement suggests that the state of voting rights in the covered jurisdictions would have been significantly different absent this remedy,” Ginsburg wrote.

In practice, divisions in Congress — where Republicans control the House and Democrats control the Senate — suggest that it would be unlikely for lawmakers to quickly hammer out a new formula to subject certain states and not others to heightened federal scrutiny.

GOP mistrust of the Obama administration Justice Department is running high, as well, making it even less likely that Republicans would eagerly restore the authority the Roberts court stripped today.

Sherrilyn Ifill, president of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, which defended the Voting Rights Act in the Shelby case, denounced the court for second-guessing Congress’s judgment as to which jurisdictions deserve extra scrutiny to ward off voter suppression.

That, she said, made the decision “an act of extraordinary judicial overreach. The Supreme Court ruling takes the most powerful tool our nation has to defend minority voting rights out of commission.” Although the court left Section 5 intact, theoretically, she added, “Today will be remembered as a step backwards in the march towards equal rights.”

Democratic voting rights lawyer Gerald Hebert, a former Justice Department official who has worked with Texas Democrats on redistricting and other battles, echoed that.

“The Court today declared racism dead in this country despite mountains of evidence to the contrary,” he said.

But at the conservative Judicial Crisis Network, chief counsel Carrie Severino lauded the court for bringing voting rights law “into the 21st Century. It is absurd to use limited federal dollars scrutinizing minor changes to voting procedures in Alaska when we could be prosecuting actual instances of voter discrimination and intimidation.” She noted that black turnout in states covered by the latest formula is actually lower than in other states.

The Feb. 27 oral arguments exposed a gaping ideological chasm among the justices.

Members of the court’s liberal wing found it hard to accept the argument that discrimination in the South and other targeted states has subsided enough to end decades of scrutiny.

Conservatives openly questioned the justification for treating states differently — particularly when some states that escape extra scrutiny have worse track records on discrimination in recent years.

Justice Kennedy, often the swing vote in divisive cases, expressed concern about putting states under a sort of federal “trusteeship.”

The case hinged on the future of Section 5 of the landmark Voting Rights Act.

That provision requires covered jurisdictions to seek permission — known as preclearance — from the Justice Department or a federal court in Washington before making any election changes, from moving a polling site to redrawing the maps used to elect school boards, city councils, state legislators and members of Congress.

Even without that provision, Section 2 of the law allows for lawsuits after the fact nationwide. But the Obama administration argued that going to court after a violation doesn’t create the same deterrent because that costs too much and takes too much time.

With lawsuits as the only recourse, Solicitor General Donald Verrilli told the justices, “You’re never going to get at all these thousands of under-the-radar changes.”

The lawyer for Shelby County, Ala., which brought the challenge, implored the justices to lift the “stigma of prior restraint.”

Section 5 covers Texas and eight other states, mostly in the South: Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina and Virginia. Parts of six other states are also covered: California, Florida, Michigan, New York, North Dakota and South Dakota. (Full list here.)

Jurisdictions can apply for bailout once they show they have not engaged in discrimination for 10 years, and a number have done so.

The Justice Department has regularly found violations in Texas, however. Each violation resets the 10-year clock.

Texas came under the Voting Rights Act in 1975 for discrimination against Latino voters. Since then, Section 5 has been invoked to block more than 200 changes to election procedure.

The provision has been used to block gerrymandered political maps each of the last four decades.

Last summer, a federal court made yet another such finding, days before another court blocked Texas’ strict new voter ID law, finding unanimously that it would impose “strict, unforgiving burdens on the poor.”

Critics say the law would have left 795,000 registered voters without an acceptable ID.

Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott argued in a friend-of-the-court brief supporting Shelby County that federal oversight thwarts legitimate state policy-making. He alleged “abusive and heavy-handed tactics” by the Obama Justice Department.

Congress last renewed the Voting Rights Act in 2006 for 25 years. Support came from lawmakers representing nearly every covered jurisdiction. The votes were overwhelming: 98-0 in the Senate, 390-33 in the House. President George W. Bush signed the extension into law.

At oral arguments, Justice Scalia brushed aside the significance of the lopsided congressional votes, calling it natural for politicians to avoid offending constituents. He left little mystery about his sympathies, calling the Voting Rights Act “the perpetuation of racial entitlement” – a comment the Rev. Al Sharpton, a civil rights activist, called “the height of insult.”

The Supreme Court all but invited a challenge to Section 5 in a case decided three years ago that involved a small utility district in Northwest Austin that had no history of racial discrimination. With support from all but one justice, the chief justice wrote in his opinion that the time was nearing for the court to revisit formulas used to decide which states get extra scrutiny.

Shelby County, near Birmingham, has lost more than 240 discrimination cases. For minority advocates, that made it a poster child for why preclearance is needed.

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